Fate's Wide Wheel
by Bad Werewolf
Summary: Crossover with Quantum Leap. The Doctor goes to a rock concert.


Disclaimer: I am making no money from this, and if you tried to sue me you'd find I had no money to begin with anyway. Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. Quantum Leap AND the song belong (according to Wiki, cause I had to look this up) to Belisarius Productions and Universal TV. Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy belongs to Douglas Adams; true genius never dies, always remember where your towel is.

Author's Note: Crossover with Quantum Leap. One teensy Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference, because I just couldn't resist. The 10th Doctor goes to a rock concert. I read somewhere that they banned songfics on this website, can't actually find it in the rules myself, but it still can't be a banned songfic if the song belongs to the fandom I'm already using and not some famous rock star out there making money from every quote of their lyrics, right?

x x x

It was a big concert, a rock band. He didn't remember the band's name, but he did have a backstage pass. Or more accurately, he had what looked to everyone here like a backstage pass, oh how he loved that little bit of psychic paper. He stood in a corner and watched the band members interacting with their fans, but did not join in the demand for autographs. He was dressed plainly enough in his brown pinstriped suit and long coat. He might have blended in to a normal crowd, but this crowd wore T-shirts and makeup to compliment the band.

He didn't come here to gawk at famous people, nor to dress up like them, that wasn't his thing at all. He came here for the show, which would start soon. The band's security guards had already started herding the fans out to the concert hall. Before he was swept away he took the time to nod and wink at the other person here who didn't fit in.

No one else saw the man in the lurid suit hovering next to the lead singer, smoking a cigar that made no smell, and literally standing IN the table as if it wasn't there. The apparition jumped and looked behind him, but seeing no one else there he gestured a 'who, me?' sign, and received a nod and a brief thumbs-up. But before anyone could question why he was gesturing to thin air next to the lead singer, he left.

x x x

The opening chords echoed through the hall to cheers from the audience. The man in the plain brown suit felt the excitement around him, but could not join in it, this song touched his soul far too deeply to trivialise it as mere popularity in his mind. He had heard it before, but never live. He knew this was the only live show to hear it, knew the difference in the singer. Met him once in another lifetime. As the song began, his lips moved silently to the words.

"As I travel in space and time,  
I want to stay, I want to go,  
You see my face but it' not mine,  
What you can't see you'll never know.

"How can we meet if I'm not there,  
Our hearts may touch, our bodies close,  
But time divides what we might share,  
And sends us somewhere no one goes."

His eyes were closed as he listened. He could feel the singer's pain, knew it too well himself. Unbidden, images of a perky blond trapped on the other side of an impenetrable wall surfaced in his mind. She had come back to him once, but they both knew it could never happen again.

But then another familiar voice, right next to his ear, joined in to sing the chorus.

"I'm just a traveller upon the sea,  
Of time, of life, of fate's wide wheel,  
Just a traveller in this mystery,  
The me I am is all that's real to me."

One of the fans, though not one he had seen backstage. She was young, no more than eighteen, her long curly blond hair was tied back and she sang along with a desperate longing that said she would give anything to see what the singer saw, to be a traveller too. He knew her, had met her. She had never met him. Even if he had not known her he would have been drawn to her, the emotion in her voice, the desire to be what the song spoke of, in spite of or because of the pain in it.

"We all begin this life alone,  
We live, we love all through the years,  
Yet deep inside we long for home,  
But it recedes, obscured by tears."

As he felt the words as much as he heard them, there were tears in his eyes, and he couldn't seem to resist the urge to join in with the next verse.

"I cried the time it falls past me,  
The door of fate remains asleep,  
But in my soul this hope burns free,  
Oh please let there be one and final leap."

The girl was looking at him now. He had unintentionally raised his voice to a powerful crescendo on that last line, feeling the words far too deeply to hold back. Just as the singer on stage had done. She stared deep into his eyes as the song continued and both kept singing.

"I'm just a traveller upon the sea,  
Of time, of life, of fate's wide wheel,  
Just a traveller in this mystery,  
The me I am is all that's real to me.  
The me I am is all that's real to me."

She saw through his eyes to the depth, pain, age and power in his soul and somehow understood something there that he could not know. Like a moth to a flame she stepped towards him and took his hand, a gesture to comfort the pain she saw, a question to the age and power.

And so the song ended. He glanced to the stage and she did the same, as the band took their bows and the lead singer raised his arms to greet the applause, he was the only person in the audience that saw the brilliant flash of blue light engulfing the singer for an instant, and for that fraction of a second immeasurable to the human mind there were two there in the place of one, then the younger traveller, the first human time traveller, leaped out of this time.

The Doctor smiled at the young woman next to him, and asked if he could buy her a drink. She accepted and he took her to a truly unique and unearthly restaurant named Milliways. It was the beginning of something beautiful, but something that had already ended. In a Library, almost a year ago.

x x x


End file.
